Despite the time in between blog posts and the website not being updated to anything cool, I didn't go out and practice heely tricks, every time I just walk in the shoes my left leg gets this weird pain because the heel area is just elevated to screw with my walking habits. It's the end of the semester and I have to focus on school, finish strong and all that.
As the blog title implies, I want to get some things off my chest about the current state of youtube/social media, and maybe this could also invigorate you to change your habits. Most of my experience was sopping up the last of the 2008-2012 youtube era where it was still 'broadcast yourself' without the fear of having to dodge being avoided cringe. An era where the internet was an escape from reality rather than the other way around. Hell, even after that era I was pertaining to habits of there, who would watch flipnote animations in 2016?
One thing that chaps my hide is the algorithm, the formula that nobody knows and everybody desperately wants because of ad revenue. It's one thing to try to game the system and to be one of the popular people out of the sense of getting attention, now its another thing to see multitudes of people do it because they get rewarded for trying to shove their presence into each and every aspect of media. Any time I click on a review that I enjoy from an already established Youtuber (NOT influencer, they can't influence my coffee to be warmer than it is as I compose this), there's like a thousand trendchaser nobodies that spring out of the woodwork and do nothing more than read the fandom wiki article and post some doomer mood and call people soyjaks. It's an amplifier of many people's attitude, which only serves to make it more one sided and worse. Imagine if you misclicked on a video that talks about a thing you like, only to find out that you can't stand whoever composed the video in their free time. You click out, then suddenly you're recommended clones of the guy with more variable viewcount and even less interest in the thing you wanted to listen about in the first place. I recognize this even when I'm in a bad mood, and it almost seems like Google wants me to be in a perpetually spoiled mood so that I can cruise on their service more. I moved on from the game grumps past 2015, I'm going to wallop your face if you think I'm spending precious bandwidth on a 10 hour 'sleep aid' videoes where I passively listen to the compilation before clicking off 23 minutes in.
Content published now isn't like the 'broadcast yourself' type of videos, more like 'broadcast a marketable version'. I've seen hollywood actors sell out less. I get that being a content creator is a viable job in the same way that being a common freelance artist can technically be a living if you make enough connections. Some of my favorite old series like 'Is It OK To Microwave This?' and dare I say it 'FRED' started off because they wanted to do something to make people laugh and get entertained, and ended once their creators saw the logical conclusion of what they can come up before it felt like milking a cash cow. Now you create something because there's a minute non-zero chance that it might become the next mega brand, enough that you can sell out and have plastic garbage litter the walmart isles and have it trashed for the next trend to take over. There's people that do it for the sake of it, sure, but I had to dig stupid deep to find them in the first place, because I had to avoid the pop junk on my feed to get to the nitty gritty that Sturgeons law definitely applies. It's my alternative mindset at work, and I'm not exactly drowning in my nostalgia to acknowledge that this exact same thing likely happened back then. You had a chance of either finding a snippet of what you were interested in, or you found a swath of AMVs and probably even a few screamer prank videos to get yourself to give up.
Another thing is that if you choose to go down that career path, how are you going to pivot to another job in the event that it doesn't work? Kind of hard to attach to your resume without heavily upselling it to be like an attribute. You might find yourself a pathway to a customer service job.
Though today I think being able to talk to someone face to face is actually a skill now. Crap, I don't mean to sound crotchety, but with people spreading that 'INTJ stare' meme because of how much people don't want to engage and would rather showcase listening at best makes more sense. There's so much listening, yet there's not much in the way of talking because everyone's afraid of being outspoken or going out of line.
Back to the job point, your monetary gain fluctuates with what the people (globally or country-wise) are interested in. You're not going to get laundromat money from talking about mario in 5 minute videos, you have to stream yourself playing it, show your WIP videos on patreon behind a moneywall, have a consistent video schedule to placate the people who watch you in the same vein as watching programs on a cable box. If you're not careful, you might come back to consiousness and find yourself riding the coattails of whatevers popular just because it's the safest thing. It's the thing where getting a job in your hobby could be just as enjoyable to work at as it is to be miserable in having your hobby be spoiled into 'job you do for free'.
That last line is a bit subjective, I myself don't even know what my hobbies are distinctly, though I am worried that I might run it ragged and associate it with something else other than 'relax time'. Remember when personal blogs were all the rage? Imagine going from a personal blog like this and then being hired to do the exact same thing for a company, only that you only discuss what the company wants you to talk about and you have to be on your computer 8 hours a day staring at a word processor. I would punch down and say it would be like working for those 'relatable' sites like buzzfeed or something gossipy like TMZ, but screw me with a pole, that was a decade and maybe 4 years ago. Now there's a whole subsection of media where the entire point is that some Joe Nobody/Jane Careslessen reads the news to you in a matter-of-a-factly tone while swapping certain words to maintain some form of revenue. Too much supply of pointless drivel in a world where demand's shrinking from how hypermiserable the news is focusing on because misery is profitable.
Doing all this ranting for free is something else. I'm assuming that you're mentally tired from reading my words, my crap is long. I got a lot to say, and this is the only real spot where I can vomit all of this up. Anyways...
A spiderweb of walled gardens, messages calling to the ones with smouldering spark, hoping to ignite the fire in both.
I'll close this rant out with the last point of how I notice people spreading themselves thin with social medias. Discord server this, bluesky and patreon that, threads and so on. I get that social media somehow is in a state of being fractured and in a big blob seemingly at random, but I say this earnestly. It is easier to just go outside and socialize than it is to hide behind the phone. It may hurt, and you might get some hard truths, and hell, maybe some of my privilege is showing with this corny advice, but I honestly believe this, and you can just leave my site in the dust if you want. Still going to be here.
We tend to group together, even with the thinnest of connections, because we are social creatures. Even if you train yourself to supress it, there's an aspect of you wanting to talk with someone, so you try to subsitute it with internet friends, time-enveloping hobbies, what have you. At the same time, trying something new and facing the potential that you might not cut it is something that everyone's afraid and is more likely never try rather than to try. You might make the risk only if because there is no other way, and trying to be stubbornly stagnant against changing times is a surefire way to go past the deep end.
No matter if I dislike what someone says, just witnessing someone try to envelop the internet like a security blanket evokes something from me. Pity? Concern? Disappointment? I already gave some time away from myself to sit down and listen to what they had to say, why would I want to spend even more time eavesdropping into their every facet of their lives? That's rude, there's more to the world than having it revolve around you, there's more to life than spilling your guts for someone else to play merry hell with it. There's also some private stuff that I would rather not involve myself with, DO NOT try to rope the internet in to win an argument, or for the matter, have the internet involved in general, there are some issues that have to be dealt with in person, sit down and explain and all that.
I want people to have a kind of snap-back and learn to have some fun without developing an ulcer of trying to fit in. Make videos about nothing, don't get caught in the whirlwind of trying to be big when your world only covers the town that you were raised in. Go to an event, call someone, lay in the grass, be bored without your phone notifications on. Jimmy Mrbeast is going to make his lineage broke for maybe 3 decades of surface level fame, but you could make something that money can't buy; experience.